Welcome to our one-day itinerary for visiting Animal Kingdom. Years ago, Animal Kingdom was a real challenge to fit into a day. The good / bad news is that’s no longer the case, and until anything major changes, we expect the park to fit pretty easily into a full day while still filling that full day nicely. Let’s talk about how to spend a full day at Animal Kingdom!
RELATED POSTS
This is one of four pieces of core content about Animal Kingdom. If you’re looking for an overview of the rides an entertainment discussed in this post, you want to visit our Animal Kingdom Rides and Entertainment Guide. For focus specifically on the beginning of your day (which is covered here, but in less detail), read the Animal Kingdom Early Entry and Rope Drop post. Make sure you learn about Disney “skip the lines” system by reading our Animal Kingdom Genie+ and Lightning Lanes guide.
Character greetings are a popular part of the Disney World experience. We don’t talk much about them in this post, but we have specific posts on Meeting Characters at Disney World, Meeting Mickey Mouse at Disney World, and Meeting Princesses at Disney World.
Introduction
Animal Kingdom is pretty similar to Epcot in that you’re looking at about three rides you really need to worry about, plus a handful that you’re hoping just to walk right onto but realistically will have moderate waits for.
And, like Epcot, you’re in a tough position where if you don’t want to spend money on Genie+ or individual Lightning Lanes, you’re probably going to have a long wait or two. Buy some mix of these things, though, and there’s a good chance you get to about 5PM and feel like they weren’t really necessary.
Animal Kingdom has a lot of flexibility. Activities like the two main animal trails (Maharajah Jungle Trek and Gorilla Falls) can be done at most any time of the day (they do often open later and close earlier than the park, though). Same with “It’s tough to be a bug” and visits to Rafiki’s Planet Watch.
Streetmosphere entertainment is scheduled frequently throughout the day. Keep a close eye on the schedule, though, because you easily can miss out on fun offerings like Tam Tam Drummers or Winged Encounters if you aren’t vigilant.
The major stage shows have multiple showtimes. And a successful rope drop will get you through most of the major rides quickly. As long as you’re doing something at the park, you’re probably making good use of your time.
This post assumes an opening time of 8AM. It does not use Early Entry, Genie+, or individual Lightning Lanes. If you’re using one or all of these, your day will go somewhat faster, but the overall structure will be pretty similar. Throughout the post we build a sample itinerary based on our experiences in the park. Your experience will vary.
While we have a toddler, this post does not cover visiting with a toddler specifically, or rider swap at Animal Kingdom. If you’re visiting with a child, you’ll want to confirm the height requirements for different rides before visiting.
Before You Get to Animal Kingdom
You can add Genie+ to your day anytime after midnight on the morning of your visit. If you’re going to use Genie+, make sure you purchase it before 7AM.
If you have Genie+, at 7AM it will be time to make your first Genie+ booking. We recommend Kilimanjaro Safaris (if you have Early Entry) or Na’vi River Journey (if you don’t have Early Entry).
If you’re a guest of a Disney resort, 7AM is also when you’ll have the chance to buy individual Lightning Lanes for Avatar Flight of Passage. Guests who aren’t staying at a Disney resort can make their first individual Lightning Lane booking at the time the park opens, subject to availability.
We don’t recommend the individual Lightning Lane, but a Flight of Passage purchase can save you 90 minutes of time waiting in line (more, on busier days), particularly if you don’t have Early Entry. Even if you do have Early Entry, Animal Kingdom can open quite early. If you buy the Flight of Passage Lightning Lane, you can arrive late for or skip Early Entry, allowing you a bit of extra sleep.
Arrival, Early Entry, and Rope Drop at Animal Kingdom
When it comes to mornings at Animal Kingdom, the park can be broken into two parts—Pandora and everything else. If you have Early Entry, you have a good opportunity to get through the two rides in Pandora—Avatar Flight of Passage and Na’vi River Journey—which are (more or less) the two most popular rides in the park.
If you don’t have Early Entry, you probably won’t bother with these, instead focusing your time on the short waits everywhere else, leaving yourself two possibly long waits to sit through later in the day.
One nice thing about Animal Kingdom is that major rides can open at three different times. Most rides open at Early Entry. Kilimanjaro Safaris usually opens at the time the park is scheduled to open. Kali River Rapids sometimes opens an hour after the park opens.
With Early Entry you could potentially be at three rides right when they open. Even without Early Entry you maybe can get to two rides at their opening times.
One of the biggest challenges of a morning at Animal Kingdom is the distance between the rides. Rides like Everest and DINOSAUR see short waits early in the day because they’re long walks from Pandora. They’re also short rides themselves (unlike Kilimanjaro Safaris). This makes them worth visiting early, in your mind, but be prepared for people in your party to complain about walking basically the entire park in an hour or so.
Everest has a single rider line (a backup option if waits get too long for you) and a very enjoyable queue, so it’s probably fine to delay it a bit. If you’re not into running back and forth, by far the most natural way to go through the park in the morning is Pandora (if you have Early Entry), then Kilimanjaro Safaris, then Everest (maybe with a stop at Kali River Rapids), then Dinoland USA.
After an initial surge of rides, maybe about 2 hours into the day, you can slow down a bit. Streetmosphere typically starts around 10AM, so you might want to catch some of that. One strategy we use a lot is to go to Creature Comforts—the Animal Kingdom Starbucks, near Africa—get coffee, and watch entertainment in Africa. Then, time permitting, you might also head to nearby Gorilla Falls Exploration trail.
On the day we’re basing this itinerary on, we skipped the coffee stop and went to the other major animal trail:
7:44 Arrive
8AM Park Opens
8:12 Everest (walk on)
8:36 Kilimanjaro Safaris (14 min wait)
9:16 DINOSAUR (walk on)
9:33 TriceraTop Spin (walk on)
10:10 Kali River Rapids (walk on)
10:15 Maharajah Jungle Trek
Things went very well on this particular morning, but even 20 minute waits for DINOSAUR and Kali River Rapids would have simply required us to delay Maharajah Jungle Trek into the afternoon.
Late Morning at Animal Kingdom
I really like to keep my afternoon open for shows / walking trails / Rafiki’s Planet Watch. I also like to have lunch at Satuli Canteen. All of this unfortunately means the end of morning is a “good” time to wait in a ridiculously long line for Flight of Passage or Na’vi River Journey.
If your morning didn’t go smoothly you might still have some other major rides left, but I think you basically need to have two of Flight of Passage, Na’vi River Journey, and Kilimanjaro Safaris done before lunch.
12:20 Avatar Flight of Passage (89 minute wait)
Lunch at Animal Kingdom
As always, we don’t recommend table service lunches in the parks. At Animal Kingdom our preferred quick service is Satuli Canteen, but we like to note that Flame Tree Barbecue is another fan favorite and has absolutely beautiful outdoor seating (that you won’t notice just walking by the restaurant). You can mobile order at either of these restaurants.
12:54 Lunch at Satuli Canteen
Afternoon at Animal Kingdom
During lunch I take a few minutes to make sure I’ve got a good handle on my schedule for the rest of the day. The major shows are Festival of the Lion King, Finding Nemo, and Feathered Friends in Flight. On busy days Lion King can fill up. A Lightning Lane via Genie+ will guarantee you a seat, or you can arrive way early (say, 45 minutes). We like to try our luck arriving about 15 minutes early, and if that doesn’t work come back earlier for a later show.
You can fit all three of these shows into a day, but you might have to take quicker walks through the zoological trails, or skip them altogether, or else skip a ride. We’re fine visiting just two shows, and our typical picks would be Festival of the Lion King and Finding Nemo. On the sample day here we watched Feathered Friends instead of Finding Nemo.
Rafiki’s Planet Watch, home to Affection Section (the petting zoo) and the Animation Experience (drawing class), along with a few other offerings, is usually worth at least a short visit. You’ll take the Wildlife Express Train five minutes each way as part of the visit.
There’s also the two main animal trails— Maharajah Jungle Trek and Gorilla Falls—if you haven’t done those. I’ll typically budget about 30 minutes for each. If you can only do one, we personally prefer Maharajah Jungle Trek.
Finally, there’s a popular character greeting, Meet Disney Pals. If characters are important to you, don’t save this one for later in the day because waits can get long.
2PM Festival of the Lion King
2:45 Rafiki’s Planet Watch
3:30 Feathered Friends in Flight
4PM Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail
5:15 Meet Disney Pals (30 min wait)
It’s worth noting that if you have Genie+, the character greeting can actually be one of your first few picks.
Evening at Animal Kingdom
Animal Kingdom has no core nighttime show like you’ll find at the other three parks. The Tree of Life has various projection shows that occur on select nights, particularly during the holidays.
These are nice effects, but I’m not upset to miss them if I need to be on a ride late (they’re also short enough that unless you’re one of the last people being hustled out of the park, you can probably stop to watch them on your way out).
Final showtimes for the major shows are usually a few hours before the park closes, and most things other than rides close before the official park close. That leaves basically two things to worry about after about 5PM / 6PM – rides and drinks / dinner.
Tusker House is a character meal and a good restaurant. We’ve had a few meals here now and enjoy it. We still haven’t been to Tiffins, which is a nicer restaurant.
Attached to Tiffins is Nomad Lounge, one of our favorite bars at Walt Disney World. To visit Nomad Lounge you need to join the “walk up list” in the app—the bar doesn’t take reservations.
In our case, we still had one ride to get on:
6:26 Na’vi River Journey (46 min wait)
As of this update, Animal Kingdom has lots of 7PM closes the next few months, so I don’t want to add too much here. For the sake of thoroughness, I’m going to add one last thing even though we didn’t actually do it as part of this day:
6:45 It’s Tough to be a Bug
Final Itinerary and Conclusions
7:44 Arrive
8AM Park Opens
8:12 Everest (walk on)
8:36 Kilimanjaro Safaris (14 min wait)
9:16 DINOSAUR (walk on)
9:33 TriceraTop Spin (walk on)
10:10 Kali River Rapids (walk on)
10:15 Maharajah Jungle Trek
12:20 Avatar Flight of Passage (89 minute wait)
12:54 Lunch at Satuli Canteen
2PM Festival of the Lion King
2:45 Rafiki’s Planet Watch
3:30 Feathered Friends in Flight
4PM Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail
5:15 Meet Disney Pals (30 min wait)
6:26 Na’vi River Journey (46 min wait)
6:45 It’s Tough to be a Bug
Obviously this day went pretty well, with the morning being basically perfect. On busier days, you’d spend a little more time going through those rides, which might cause you to cut one of the zoological trails or a show.
In moderate to high crowds, Animal Kingdom becomes about trade offs. You can either pay for Lightning Lanes or accept you won’t be able to do the entire park. The upside is that even if you don’t pay for Lightning Lanes, you’ll at least have plenty of rides, shows, and other activities to fill your day.
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